Well done China: save 10 billion by buying sanctioned oil
China has likely saved $10 billion on crude imports this year, having imported record volumes of cheaper oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela, all three under U.S. and Western sanctions, according to a Reuters analysis on Wednesday .
While international benchmark prices have risen since July due to supply tightening, China has managed to save billions of dollars on its crude import bill, taking advantage of cheaper crude cargoes from the three oil exporters subjected to sanctions.
China imported a record volume of 2.765 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Russia, Iran and Venezuela between January and September, according to Reuters analysis of data from ship flow trackers Kpler and Vortexa.
If China had purchased these volumes from unsanctioned oil exporters, it would have paid $10 billion more on its crude imports, according to Reuters calculations.
Such imports are estimated to have accounted for 25% of China's overall crude purchases in the first nine months of 2023.
Russia, Iran and Venezuela accounted for about 21% of China's crude imports in the same period in 2022 and just 12% in the same months in 2020, according to Reuters analysis.
Despite rising oil prices in recent months and narrowing discounts of Russian crude oils to international benchmarks, Russia remains the main supplier of crude oil to China.
During the first half of 2023, China's imports of Russian crude averaged 2.13 million bpd, which helped Russia displace its OPEC+ partner, Saudi Arabia, from the top spot as the single supplier of the the world's largest importer of crude oil so far this year, according to Financial Times estimates based on Chinese customs data.
China has also increased crude imports from Iran, due to increased competition with India for cheap Russian oil and a more lenient enforcement of US sanctions on Iranian oil trade so far this year .
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The article Well done China: save 10 billion by buying sanctioned oil comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/brava-cina-risparmia-10-miliardi-comprando-petrolio-sanzionato/ on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 16:00:24 +0000.